octave-dev

[OctDev] Using leasqr to fit experimental data. Question about weighing

[Timo B. <t.b...@gm...>]

Hey guys & girls,

I found a script on the net that uses leasqr to fit experimental data
to a function and adapted it to my needs. Works like a charm =)

I do still have some trouble with understanding/using the weighing
properly and hoped maybe someone could help me out.
Here is my situation:
I have experimental x-y data, the process is roughly an exponential
decay. As always with real life data, its noisy and especially in the
tail of the exponential, the noise is a problem. I know the absolute
size of noise, let's call this number "noize". What I am used to doing
in experimental data fitting is to take the weighing factor for each
y-point as the inverse of its relative error, i.e. noize/yvalue.
But the "wt" used in leasqr has to be an N*N-matrix, where N is the
number of y-values ... I am a bit confused as to how I would construct
the proper wt-matrix for the problem at hand.

Help would be much appreciated,
thanks in advance,
Timo

Re: [OctDev] Using leasqr to fit experimental data. Question about weighing

[Nir K. <nkr...@cc...>]

Hi Timo,

As far as I can tell from the documentation (
http://octave.sourceforge.net/optim/function/leasqr.html ), wt is an N*1
vector. If your estimated error standard deviation is constant and equal to
noize, you would set wt = ones(n, 1) / noize

Nir

Re: [OctDev] Using leasqr to fit experimental data. Question about weighing

[Timo B. <t.b...@gm...>]

That works indeed, cheers Nir!
I was confused because by default, wt is set to ones(size(y)) ... also
from the documentation - which kind of clashed with the initial
statement, that wt should be of the same dimension as y ...

Anyways, thanks for the quick reply, I consider my problem fixed.

Timo

2012/10/17 Nir Krakauer <nkr...@cc...>:
> Hi Timo,
>
> As far as I can tell from the documentation (
> http://octave.sourceforge.net/optim/function/leasqr.html ), wt is an N*1
> vector. If your estimated error standard deviation is constant and equal to
> noize, you would set wt = ones(n, 1) / noize
>
> Nir

Re: [OctDev] Using leasqr to fit experimental data. Question about weighing

[Olaf T. <i7...@t-...>]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 12:23:12AM +0200, Timo Bretten wrote:
> That works indeed, cheers Nir!
> I was confused because by default, wt is set to ones(size(y)) ... also

ones(size(y)) have the same dimensions as y

> from the documentation - which kind of clashed with the initial
> statement, that wt should be of the same dimension as y ...

so there should be no clash of these statements.

> Anyways, thanks for the quick reply, I consider my problem fixed.

But for the record, you do not need to specify weights if they are
constant.

Olaf
 
> Timo
> 
> 2012/10/17 Nir Krakauer <nkr...@cc...>:
> > Hi Timo,
> >
> > As far as I can tell from the documentation (
> > http://octave.sourceforge.net/optim/function/leasqr.html ), wt is an N*1
> > vector. If your estimated error standard deviation is constant and equal to
> > noize, you would set wt = ones(n, 1) / noize
> >
> > Nir
> 
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Re: [OctDev] Using leasqr to fit experimental data. Question about weighing

[Timo B. <t.b...@gm...>]

Thanks Olaf,
you are of course right. It was late yesterday and I didn't take
enough time to actually think before asking.

Maybe I wasn't clear in the discription of my problem. The absolute
error is the same for every data-point, i.e. I measure voltages
something like 0.10 +/- 0.05 V, the +/-0.05 stays the same for each
x-y pair (this is waht I called "noize" in my initial eMail).
In the tail of the exponential, the voltages I measure are small, like
0.06 +/- 0.05 V and thus have a much greater relative error associated
with them.
In my fit, I want those low, tail voltage values to be weighted less
strongly. Actuallly the weight w_i for data point y_i should be equal
to (y_i / noize)^2, so can I just use wt=ones(size(y)).*(y/noize).^2 ?

Thanks once more,
Timo

2012/10/17 Olaf Till <i7...@t-...>:
> On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 12:23:12AM +0200, Timo Bretten wrote:
>> That works indeed, cheers Nir!
>> I was confused because by default, wt is set to ones(size(y)) ... also
>
> ones(size(y)) have the same dimensions as y
>
>> from the documentation - which kind of clashed with the initial
>> statement, that wt should be of the same dimension as y ...
>
> so there should be no clash of these statements.
>
>> Anyways, thanks for the quick reply, I consider my problem fixed.
>
> But for the record, you do not need to specify weights if they are
> constant.
>
> Olaf

Re: [OctDev] Using leasqr to fit experimental data. Question about weighing

[Olaf T. <i7...@t-...>]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 03:20:30PM +0200, Timo Bretten wrote:
> Thanks Olaf,
> you are of course right. It was late yesterday and I didn't take
> enough time to actually think before asking.
> 
> Maybe I wasn't clear in the discription of my problem. The absolute
> error is the same for every data-point, i.e. I measure voltages
> something like 0.10 +/- 0.05 V, the +/-0.05 stays the same for each
> x-y pair (this is waht I called "noize" in my initial eMail).
> In the tail of the exponential, the voltages I measure are small, like
> 0.06 +/- 0.05 V and thus have a much greater relative error associated
> with them.

Actually I wouldn't take the greater _relative_ variance as a reason
to assign different weights.

> In my fit, I want those low, tail voltage values to be weighted less
> strongly. Actuallly the weight w_i for data point y_i should be equal
> to (y_i / noize)^2, so can I just use wt=ones(size(y)).*(y/noize).^2 ?

The choice of weights is outside the scope of this optimization
algorithm. Other weights than suggested in the help of leasqr can be
reasonable (but I don't see this in your case, as I said). Only the
reasonable computation of some additional statistics (corp, covp,
covr, Z) depends on the specification of weights as suggested in the
help text.

I consider nonlin_residmin (or nonlin_curvefit) as preferable to
leasqr (while their default backend algorithm is identical to that of
leasqr). They delegate the computation of statistics into an extra
function (residmin_stat) and so do not mention any restriction on the
weights in their help text.

Olaf

> Thanks once more,
> Timo

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